Busy week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Prac teaching all today with 5-7 year old snotty, but lovely kiddies and a maths uni exam tomorrow..........with a side of Sociology in the context of schooling uni exam on Friday 2pm....bring on Saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nicholas James Livingstone.......

It is twenty years today since I lost my brother in an accident, he was 18 years old.
He would be 38 years old now.

Gone but never forgotten.....

Heirloom Silver Cleaning

I  recently dug out all the family silver from storage and was dismayed to see how much tarnish  had accumulated. I was using the trusty Silvo Silver Polish to clean it and it was taking for ever; so I went to Google and found the BEST and QUICKEST way to polish everything.

It was so simple.

I lined the kitchen sink with Aluminium foil and filled it with extremely hot water and a bag of Bicarbonate of soda and then just put the pieces in and left them for a few minutes. After a rinse in warm water and a wipe with a linen cloth all the pieces were sparkling.

Before

After

I have been slightly unwell for the last 16 months, nothing serious but debilitating. We are now close to finding the reason, a lovely persistent Indonesian bug or something else.
I have just found unread 4700 emails in gmail and 800 in yahoo.....looks like I am going to busy for the next few weeks!

Australia day 2011

The weather was absolutely glorious today for Australia Day. We lounged on the deck and in the pool with family and friends.

Tropical Christmas 2010

Georgias Graduation

My home on Near Map

My SIL told me about this great new site which has aerial photos of all over Australia.
They are so clear!

http://www.nearmap.com/

This is my house, with my sheets on the clothes line!
I am sure it is only in Australia at the moment, but it is much cleared than Google Earth.
Have fun stalking your neighbourhood!

Heart stopping terror at home

THIS SNAKE WAS IN MY HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My Twitter and Facebook friends have all heard me shouting out in horror about finding this critter in the toy room draped over the kids TV and DVD/etc machines while I was preparing the room ready for  Georgia's birthday sleep over party.

Yes, a big HUGE (to me) snake, inside my house.

Luckily my favourite snake handler still lives next door and was able to save the day and remove this beast back to his special enclosure before releasing into the wild...along way from here.

Words can not express the fear I felt, or the speed I ran up the street to next door. I'm sure you can all imagine what it would be like to be home alone with a slithering reptile...uggh! GJ was at work an hour away and his advice was to shoo it out with a broom...yeah right, as if that was ever going to happen.

Unfortunately there are a lot of nasty critters in Australia; and they all seem to want to come and live with me, here are but a few of my terror experiences.

GJ also had a bad experience last week, he had to scrap a rotting dead very large rat out of our roof......yes the joys of Australian acreage living!

Moroccan light fittings have been installed!

 

Our electrician has just spent his 4th full day here, he still has at least another 2 days worth of work to do....I'm planning on signing over GJ's entire pay-check to him this month.....

We have had rats chewing out wiring and the dirty filthy tenants (DFT) smashed a lot of the outside lighting which allowed water to get in and rust and fuse all the wiring. We also found burnt out light fittings (so bad it had burnt and cracked the plaster in places) due to too hot bulbs being installed.

The electrician hired a HUGE ladder to replace all the bulbs in our glorious high ceiling (6m / 20ft.). The ladder has gone back, but one of the lights at the highest point is faulty and flickers and hisses....mmmmmm oh the joys of a money pit/dream home!

But on the bright side, I love my Moroccan light fittings which have just been installed on the decks. 

We had Friday night drinks and dinner on the deck admiring their beauty.

We got the lights in Jakarta (here is the original post) and now I wish I bought many many more!!!!!!!!!!

GJ and I trialled every single piece of art, in every conceivable combination, in our bedroom until we ended up with this arrangement which I love. The muted reds match so well with the green gold walls. These are all antique Sumatran (Indonesian) ceremonial cloths. The two on the right hand side are Sumatran kain selandang songket (supplemental weft gold thread)

Slowly the walls are being filled.....

The hall way in the kids area.
I love seeing all my photos on a wall.

It felt like an early Christmas

GJ opened up some of the crates containing our art yesterday; they have been boxed up for nearly 10 months.

I fell in love with all the pieces all over again.

Now to find spare wall space...which will be hard as our home is more than half glass!

Fathers day 2010

Fathers day this year was on the second day of Spring.......
There is no way any one could convince me it was warm enough for swimming...I'll wait for December when the water is tepid!